Here is a summary of the latest developments:
Egypt
• President-elect Morsi has moved into the office once occupied by ousted leader Hosni Mubarak and has started consultations on forming his team and a new government, AP reports.
• British prime minister David Cameron has sent a letter of congratulation to president-elect Morsi.
• Trading was briefly suspended on the Cairo stock market because of a sharp rise in prices following the presidential election result.
Syria
• Thirty-three more members of the Syrian military have defected to Turkey with their families, according to Turkey's state-run news agency.
• Thirty-six people have been killed so far today, according to the Local Coordination Committees activist movement.
• The Red Cross says hundreds of civilians are still trapped in the city of Homs and aid workers cannot reach them because of the fighting.
• European Union foreign ministers have called for a calm response to Syria's shooting down of a Turkish military reconnaissance jet.
Tunisia
• A court has upheld a seven-year jail sentence against a young Tunisian who posted cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook.
Syria: Thirty-six people have been killed so far today, according to the Local Coordination Committees activist movement. Twelve dead were reported in Deir Ezzor, eight in Idlib, four in Homs, four in Damascus suburbs, three in Daraa, two in Lattakia, and one each in Aleppo, Hama and Damascus.
Saudi Arabia: The kingdom's announcement that it will allow women athletes to compete in the Olympics for the first time is an important step forward, but fails to address the fundamental barriers to Saudi women playing sports, Human Rights Watch said today.
With four weeks until the start of the Olympics, the Saudi Embassy in London said that the country's National Olympic Committee will "oversee participation of women athletes who can qualify." Failure to allow women to play sports violates the Olympic Charter, which prohibits gender discrimination, and could have triggered Saudi Arabia's banning from the London Games.
But Human Rights Watch cautioned that the gender discrimination in Saudi Arabia is institutional and entrenched. Millions of girls are banned from playing sports in schools, and women are prohibited from playing team sports and denied access to sports facilities, including gyms and swimming pools.
Saudi officials have said that with the games now just a few weeks away, the only female competitor at Olympic standard is show jumper Dalma Rushdi Malhas, who has lived and trained outside of the country for much of her life.
Egypt: Reuters has more information about Mohamed Morsi's activities today:
A security official said Morsi and his wife took a tour of their new home, once Mubarak's main residence - a dramatic change of fortunes for a former political prisoner whose group was pursued remorselessly during Mubarak's 30-year rule.
An aide said Morsi then went to the defence ministry for talks with the head of the military council Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and the army-appointed prime minister Kamal al-Ganzouri for talks on steps towards forming a new government, a visit rich with symbolism about where real power lies.
As president, Morsi can appoint the cabinet. His aides say he has already reached out to politicians from outside the Brotherhood such as reformist Mohamed ElBaradei, who has yet to publicly respond. But legislative powers remain with the army while the parliament is dissolved, restricting his power to act.
Tunisia: A court today upheld a seven-year jail sentence against a young Tunisian who posted cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook, Reuters reports.
Jabeur Mejri was convicted of upsetting public order and morals. The initial sentence was handed down on March 28 against Mejri, who is in jail, and against Ghazi Beji, who was sentenced in absentia. Mejri was able to appeal, but Beji remains on the run.
Arab Spring: The BBC's coverage of the Arab Spring ignored events in some countries that were forgotten in the rush to concentrate on "big" stories, according to a new report.
Edward Mortimer, a journalist and former director of communications for United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, reviewed the corporation's coverage across television, radio and online.
He said the BBC "covered a challenging, complex and geographically disparate set of stories in an engaging way" and added that he was "impressed" by its standards. But he said countries including Algeria, Morocco and Jordan, where regimes survived a challenge to their authority, were "largely forgot", the Press Association reports.
Speaking at a briefing for journalists today, he said: "That's a pity because it's always interesting why dogs don't bark and why certain rulers were able to avoid the kind of turmoil and bloodshed of neighbouring countries".
Mr Mortimer also said the BBC made some mistakes in its reporting of other countries including Bahrain, where he said coverage was "rather sporadic, and perhaps insufficient".
Mr Mortimer said the BBC did "a good job in vetting" footage sent in by the public but research found it did not always issue it with a caveat explaining its origin.
He said: "The BBC owes it to its audience to make it absolutely clear how confident they are or not about what's being shown on screen or played on radio".
Egypt: Morsi's reported statement about expanding Egypt's ties with Iran to create a strategic "balance" in the Middle East has been attracting a lot of attention – especially in Israel. It also seems to have intensified the battle between rival media in Iran.
The remarks were originally published by Fars News, which claims to have interviewed Morsi. Fars is linked to the revolutionary guards controlled by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But now the Islamic Republic News Agency, linked to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is reporting a denial of the story from Morsi's spokesman.
Syria: The International Committee of the Red Cross has issued a statement elaborating on the remarks earlier today from its president, Jakob Kellenberger (see 12.52pm).
The ICRC says it is making another attempt to gain access to areas of Homs badly affected by fighting and where it fears there are many sick and wounded needing attention and evacuation.
On Sunday 24 June, the ICRC renewed its request for a two-hour humanitarian pause in the fighting in areas of Homs. This request was made to the Syrian authorities; the ICRC is waiting for an official reply. Once the approval is granted, the ICRC will initiate contact with different opposition groups to secure their agreement to a halt in the fighting.
(You will recall that we secured approvals from all sides last week for a pause, but gunfire continued when we tried to enter the old city of Homs, making it unsafe to continue.)
Once all approvals are granted, the ICRC plans to send a team to Homs. Both the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent will need safe and unhindered access to people in need of life-saving assistance. The situation will be continuously re-assessed on the ground by ICRC and SARC teams, who will together decide on whether or not to enter areas in need of assistance.
We want to enter the old city of Homs to evacuate people who wish to leave to safer areas. Our first priority will be to: (1) evacuate the wounded and the sick to safer areas where they can be treated; (2) we also want to evacuate civilians who have been unable to flee the conflict area and wish to leave; and (3) we want to bring in aid, including medical supplies.
Egypt: Al-Jazeera reporter Rawya Rageh tweets that Morsi is now meeting prime minister Kamal Ganzouri:
State TV reporting President-elect #Morsi is now meeting PM Ganzouri at presidency hq in Heliopolis #Egypt
— Rawya Rageh (@RawyaRageh) June 25, 2012
Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
Syria: A top UN human rights investigator has been holding talks in Damascus with senior Syrian officials to pave the way for an investigation into widespread violations in the country, including recent massacres, UN and diplomatic sources told Reuters today.
It was the first time that Brazilian expert Paulo Pinheiro (left) was granted permission to enter Syria since his team was set up last September by the UN Human Rights Council.
"He is trying to pave the way for us to be able to go into the country," a UN source told Reuters in Geneva. "We need to go before September when our final report is to be submitted."
Here is a summary of the latest developments:
Egypt
• President-elect Morsi has moved into the office once occupied by ousted leader Hosni Mubarak and has started consultations on forming his team and a new government, AP reports.
• British prime minister David Cameron has sent a letter of congratulation to president-elect Morsi.
• Trading was briefly suspended on the Cairo stock market because of a sharp rise in prices following the presidential election result.
Syria
• Thirty-three more members of the Syrian military have defected to Turkey with their families, according to Turkey's state-run news agency.
• The Red Cross says hundreds of civilians are still trapped in the city of Homs and aid workers cannot reach them because of the fighting.
• European Union foreign ministers have called for a calm response to Syria's shooting down of a Turkish military reconnaissance jet.
Egypt: Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British Understanding thinks it's a bit odd that prime minister David Cameron decided to congratulate Morsi by letter rather than phoning him. And has the letter gone by airmail or surface mail?
Appears unusual to those in the know that Cameron decided to write to #Mursi not call him. (in the Arab World, phone is preferable) #egypt
— Chris Doyle (@Doylech) June 25, 2012
Syria: Foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi has given a press conference explaining the Syrian official point of view regarding the shooting down of the Turkish warplane.
In the video above, Makdisi says the aircraft had disappeared below the radar and was flying at a height of 100m, one to two kilometres from the Syrian coast. It was then "seen by the eye" heading towards the coast and was hit with an anti-aircraft missile and crashed in Syrian territorial waters.
Syria: The Red Cross president said today that hundreds of civilians are still trapped in the city of Homs and aid workers cannot reach them because of the fighting.
Jakob Kellenberger says the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are trying to secure a truce between the government and opposition forces in order to evacuate civilians and the wounded trapped in Homs.
Kellenberger said today that the Red Cross remains the only international organisation able to operate on the ground in Syria, AP reports.
He said that the Red Cross workers have been unable to enter certain neighbourhoods in Homs even after both sides agreed to a humanitarian pause in the fighting last week.
Photograph: Carl Court/PA
Egypt: British prime minister David Cameron has sent a letter of congratulation to president-elect Mohammed Morsi, the Press Association reports.
"We welcome President Morsi's statement that he intends to form an inclusive government that will govern on behalf of all the Egyptian people," Cameron's official spokesman said.
In Washington, the White House has also congratulated Morsi while urging him to safeguard Egypt's national unity:
We look forward to working together with president-elect Morsi and the government he forms, on the basis of mutual respect, to advance the many shared interests between Egypt and the United States.
We believe that it is important for president-elect Morsi to take steps at this historic time to advance national unity by reaching out to all parties and constituencies in consultations about the formation of a new government.
We believe in the importance of the new Egyptian government upholding universal values, and respecting the rights of all Egyptian citizens – including women and religious minorities such as Coptic Christians.
Syria: The Aviationist website has an article discussing what the Turkish warplane might have been doing before it was shot down by the Syrian military (thanks to Brown Moses for pointing it out).
Aircraft violating a foreign airspace should not be fired upon but warned, intercepted and eventually escorted outside the violated airspace.
Anyway, what is still far from being explained is the reason why an (R)F-4 was flying at low level and high speed just 1km off the Syrian coast.
There are at least three possibilities: navigation error, weather, or intentional violation to probe the enemy air defence readiness.
The article seems to lean towards the view that the warplane was testing Syrian defences. However, it also wonders if the incident might be connected with the defection of a Syrian warplane to Jordan the day before:
Although they most probably knew that the aircraft was a Turkish Air Force plane, the Syrians may have mistaken it for a defecting Syrian Arab Air Force plane. Hence they shot it down before it could reach Turkey, to prevent another embarrassing episode like the one of the Mig-21 that defected to Jordan.
Egypt: The Cairo stock market seems to like the election result. Trading was suspended trading for half an hour today after share prices soared following the country's presidential election result, Reuters reports.
The benchmark index was up 6.7% when trading was paused automatically, in line with stock market rules.
Today's rise comes after shares hit a five-month low during the period of uncertainty after the poll.
Syria: A rescue plane sent to look for the Turkish fighter jet that had been shot down over the eastern Mediterranean on Friday was itself placed in the crosshairs by the Syrian military, a European diplomat has told AFP.
The diplomat is quoted as saying: "When a plane is targeted by such a defence system, the pilots are warned by their instruments that they are targeted ... But the plane was not shot at."
Egypt: Working on the principle that it's never too early to start holding a new president to account and comparing his deeds to his promises, an Egyptian activist group has launched The Morsimeter (in Arabic). The Global Voices website explains:
The application is created by Zabatak, (@Zabatak), a non-profit initiative which aims at making Egypt become bribery free, corruption-free and safe. And on MorsiMeter's Facebook page, they describe the application as follows:
"The [Morsimeter] is an initiative to document and monitor the performance of the new Egyptian president, Mohammed Morsi, and we will monitor what has been achieved from what he had promised in his programme during his first 100 days in power."
Syria: Thirty-three more members of the Syrian military have defected to Turkey with their families, AP reports Turkey's state-run news agency.
The Anadolu Agency said today that the group, which includes a general and two colonels, crossed into Turkey overnight. They were being hosted at a refugee camp near the border. There was no further information on the group.
Thousands of soldiers have abandoned the regime, but most are low-level conscripts. The Free Syria Army, the loosely linked group of rebel forces, is made up largely of defectors. Defectors affiliated with the Free Syrian Army and based in Turkey are known to collect food and other supplies to deliver to comrades on smuggling routes.
Egypt: Reflecting on the election result in Egypt, a guest writer for the Arabist blog pays tribute to the Muslim Brotherhood's role in preventing ballot-rigging:
The most striking thing about these elections, and probably one of its most important lasting effects, is the accuracy of the independent tallies conducted by the Muslim Brotherhood and its political faction the Freedom and Justice Party. There is no other organised political force in Egypt with the resources to accurately conduct polling at all of Egypt's 16,000 polling stations, and the MB has not squandered its opportunity to occupy this role ...
Last week's announcement of victory at Morsi's campaign headquarters put massive pressure on senior officials to not consider tampering with election results and cause a Shafik presidency ...
It is true that in all likelihood, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is satisfied with a Morsi executive that is stripped of its power, but its obvious preference for Ahmed Shafiq was made much more difficult the moment that the MB's independent exit polls announced this morning's results.
It may seem odd to state in a political climate where many revolutionaries don't trust the MB and its FJP candidates, but the Muslim Brotherhood electoral results are trustworthy. It may, in fact, be the most trustworthy part of the entire organisation and its most positive contribution to the ongoing Egyptian revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood now officially has a reputation of offering a source of accurate electoral information that minimises the chance of voter fraud.
Egypt: President-elect Morsi has moved into the office once occupied by ousted leader Hosni Mubarak and has started consultations on forming his team and a new government, AP reports citing a Morsi aide.
Yasser Ali, a spokesman for the presidential campaign, said the 60-year-old Morsi arrived at the presidential office this morning for official meetings and consultations.
Morsi has said that forming a national coalition government and a widely representative presidential team was a priority.
Syria: European Union foreign ministers today called for a calm response to Syria's shooting down of a Turkish military reconnaissance jet, Reuters reports.
"We're very concerned about what's happened and very concerned for the family of the two pilots who are missing," said EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. "We will be obviously looking to Turkey to be restrained in its response."
The ministers were meeting in Luxembourg for a regular conference, a day before a scheduled Nato meeting to discuss how to react to Friday's incident ...
British foreign secretary William Hague called for increased pressure, but said the jet incident did not fundamentally alter the situation in Syria.
(all times BST) Welcome to Middle East Live. Today we shall be focusing on the aftermath of the Egyptian presidential election and also reporting the latest developments in Syria.
Egypt
• After much delay, Mohamed Morsi has become Egypt's first freely elected president. He beat former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq by around 900,000 votes. Morsi secured 51.7% of the vote, compared to 48% for Shafiq.
• Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the military council which still holds all the levers of power in Egypt, congratulated Morsi on his victory.
• Morsi's victory was greeted with scenes of wild celebrations by tens of thousands in Tahrir Square.
Syria
• Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu the warplane shot down by Syrian forces last week had no "covert mission related to Syria," and it was purely on a training flight to test Turkey's radar capabilities.
• A ship carrying Russian helicopters to Syria, which turned back after its insurance was cut, is expected to resume its journey, according to the Russian Interfax news agency.
• The International Committee of the Red Cross has condemned the killing of of a Red Crescent volunteer in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.